But wouldn't it be nice to know exactly who is actually tracking you? Now you can.

Lightbeam is an extension for the Firefox browser.

It allows you to see who's tracking you online and uses interactive visualizations to show you the first and third-party sites you interact with on the internet. As you browse, Lightbeam reveals behind the scenes activity on the web today, including parts that are not transparent to the average user.

How Lightbeam works:

Download the add-on in your Firefox browser.

It will create a record of events for every site you visit and every third-party site that is stored locally on your browser.

Lightbeam visually graphs these events to highlight interactions between the websites you visit and the third parties.

The extension continues to add to your graph as you browse the internet. You can stop it at any time by disabling it or uninstalling the add-on. You can easily save or delete the data.

Here is an example of a graph created by the Lightbeam extension:

To get started, click on the link we've provided in the blue box below, or click here. Then, click on the Download Lightbeam for Firefox box on that page. Once you've added the extension, follow the instructions on how to use it.